Hurtling Toward the Water
In 2016, when deadly floods devastated West Virginia, they rushed to do the dirty rescue work and to comfort people as they grieved their losses. Then they mourned their own.
June 25, 2016, 2 P.M.
I packed my Ford Expedition with everything they listed on the site where volunteers could register. Sixteen gallons of distilled water. Four gallons of bleach. Two boxes of latex gloves—different sizes, 250 of each. Three tubes of antibiotic cream. Four packages of baby wipes. My Carhartt overalls and jacket. Rose-patterned Dr. Martens, because they were the only boots I owned. Seventy-five secondhand books to help restock the flooded library, bought at a discount from a thrift store. Bags of old clothes. Towels. Blankets. Pillows. Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Three cases of Genesee Light Beer. A quarter ounce of marijuana. A pile of shorts and T-shirts for when I was done cleaning, when I started school.
Judging by the contents of my car, I was ready.
Two days before I loaded my car, the flood came to West Virginia, the place where my heart always lives. On June 23, 2016, more than eight inches of rain fell in less than 12 hours, causing flash floods on the Greenbrier, Elk, and New rivers. I watched from my bed in Rochester, New York, as they read the list of the missing. More than 500, at first, then dwindling as the list of the missing became the list of the dead. I watched as part of my heartland was washed away, as a house on fire floated down Howard’s Creek in White Sulphur Springs, as the towns of Rainelle, Clendenin, Richwood, and Elkview were largely destroyed.
Fear thrummed in my veins. and my internal navigation system was already mapping the route. The images blurred as I shook my husband awake, wiping away my tears.
“What is it?” he asked, eyes still closed. The clock ticked past midnight, into June 24. Friday. Day two.
“The death toll is up to sixteen, and there are more missing,” I told him. “There are bodies in the water.” I wondered if one of them was named Topher.
“The death toll is up to sixteen, and there are more missing,” I told him. “There are bodies in the water.” I wondered if one of them was named Topher.
“Why are you still watching it? You should get some sleep. Like I was.”
“I can’t. I think I have to go.”
He opened his eyes.
“Okay,” he started slowly. “To do what?”
“To help?” I said, wondering what that meant. “I think you should go with me. They need us.”
“You know I can’t do that,” he said. I did know, but I hoped there could be a moment when there was something more important than his job.
I nodded.
“I’ll sleep on it,” I said. “I’ll know when I wake up if I should go.”
He turned over in bed.
“You already know what you’re gonna do. And I can’t stop you. Do what you must.” I turned back to my computer screen, to the list of names. Emanuel Williams, eight years old. There were Parsonses and Blankenships and Nicelys, names I’d learned when I lived there. Names that made me wonder if I knew their cousins.
I spent the next thirty-six hours planning my drive south through upstate New York and Pennsylvania, down to the mountains that held what was left of me. I listened to Beyoncé sing “Daddy Lessons” seventeen times in a row, wondering what my daddy had taught me that I could take with me.
“Buy Old Tyme brand knives, every time. Nothing else will stay as sharp.”
“If you need to practice smashing a dude’s balls, grab a potato and crush it under your heel.”
“Buy your work clothes secondhand and stained. You will wear them out anyway if they are being used.”
The last one had helped me in my packing. I had never worn the brown heavy cotton that hung from straps on my shoulders, but someone had. Someone had stained the knees with gray chalk dust, maybe concrete, and the galluses frayed at their vertical edges. I looked like I worked hard, was made of the same dust that stained the knees. I might pass as an asset. The closer I got to Pittsburgh, the deeper the green crush of hills became. In southern Pennsylvania, I saw signs for West Virginia University and Sheetz, the convenience store chain that spans the state, and knew the border was ahead. Morgantown hadn’t been hit that hard, so I knew it would look how I remembered it.
But past that? Further south, down Interstate 79? I had no illusions. The darkness that crowded the road was complete, no lights for a hundred miles, save my headlights. I was the electric current hurtling toward the water. I was running away from safety.
June 26, 2016, 12:30 A.M.
It was after midnight when my car crawled through the heart of West Virginia. I passed Buckhannon, where I would soon return to graduate school at West Virginia Wesleyan. I drove through Flatwoods and Servia and Wallback, all dark and silent in the night. There was no light, no sound, save for the thrum of my wheels on the road and Beyoncé, asking her husband who the fuck he thought she was.
You ain’t married to no average bitch, boy.
I thought of my husband, asleep at home. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was eating, and when he wasn’t eating, he was at work, and when he wasn’t at work, we were pretending we were happy together. I wasn’t very good at it, but we’d been married less than a year, and I knew if I left him there was no hope for me, no future, no plan. I had to stay because there was nowhere else to go.
Maybe the flood was an excuse. Maybe my running in the opposite direction to help people I didn’t know in a place that didn’t (always) want me was an escape route. Maybe I was driving toward the water, to the floodgates, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with what was flowing through me. Longing. Desire. And none of it aimed toward him.
I thought about the last time I had felt love, what it looked like. I remembered Topher’s black hair, his dirty shoes, his armpits that smelled of pine trees. But I stopped myself from seeing his face.
I thought about the last time I had felt love, what it looked like. I remembered Topher’s black hair, his dirty shoes, his armpits that smelled of pine trees. But I stopped myself from seeing his face. It was easier to imagine pieces of Topher, not the whole.
No, no, no. Not going there. That’s not why I’m here.
But wasn’t it? When I saw the names of the dead, wasn’t there a Topher? Wasn’t there some reminder of what I had lost? Wasn’t this exactly where I was supposed to be going?
“Not yet,” I said out loud, to myself and the car full of supplies. First to Elkview, to sleep in a parking lot, if I could find the Walmart. In the morning, I would go to the Methodist church that had been turned into a volunteer center, get an address to go to, make a plan. Abide by the plan. Do what I set out to do: help.
June 26, 2016, 6 A.M.
I woke with the sun streaming through the window of my car. I had my feet on the dash, head against a pillow I had wedged between the door and my body. When I got to the Elkview exit the night before, hazard-orange signs warned of high water, so I kept going, closer to Charleston, where I parked at a gas station that had electricity.
I was only a few miles away from the church when traffic slowed me down. I thought it was a gas station, finally opened back up, but as I crept forward, a hill of trash grew before me. There were clothes and plastic toys, televisions with cracked screens, bags and bags and bags of amorphous refuse. A temporary dump for a permanent problem.
Finally, at the church, I sat in my car, waiting for someone to open the sanctuary doors. Beyoncé howled that when her lover hurt her, he hurt himself. Try not to hurt yourself. I hadn’t talked to my husband since I hit the road, save for a few status-update texts. He told me not to hurt myself, but did he mean not to hurt him?
I watched as the doors to the church swung open and inward. The volunteers were gathering from their cars, signing forms on clipboards. I put my cigarette out in a can of Diet Coke and clambered out of my oversized vehicle. They gave me an address in Pinch, and as I drove toward the damage, I pined for the family I hadn’t met yet but was assigned to help.
There is nowhere else to go except down past where the water came up. Take a shovel. Take a bucket. Take your two good hands and start to claw. You are cleaning what cannot and will not be cleaned, but at least the bodies washed away, down the river.
June 26, 2016, 10 A.M.
Sink your teeth into it, but not your mouth. We mean the teeth of your boots, those new things you bought before you left New York, your not-home. They’re not broken in, like the work boots eating mud around you. Crawl under the house, and when we say crawl, we mean belly down, full again of the mud, but don’t get it in your mouth. There is shit in the mud and piss and paper and canned tomatoes that burst from the pressure of the water. This is where the flood went, where you go to unbury the house, the boxes of photographs, the hidden Playboy magazines behind a shelf. This is where you go because there is nowhere else to go except down past where the water came up. Take a shovel. Take a bucket. Take your two good hands and start to claw. You are cleaning what cannot and will not be cleaned, but at least the bodies washed away, down the river. They collect in the gutters. Don’t open your mouth. It isn’t safe to breathe.
This is the West Virginia you weren’t allowed to see until the water came. This is the West Virginia where no one will look at you while you crawl beneath someone else’s grandmother’s house and wonder why you’re the only girl willing to crawl. You are used to doing the dirty work, after all.
June 26, 2016, 1 P.M.
No matter where you go, people will feed you. If you put in the work, they will find a way to fuel your body, that machine that can only go for as long as you can stand. Someone has made a fire somewhere that is high and hot and blue. There, they put a giant cauldron over the flame. There, they boil gallons of water poured from the jugs that you have brought with you, or the National Guard dropped at their corner. The water is precious and hot and clean, unlike the floodwaters. In the cauldron, they drop pounds of hard, dried spaghetti. They stir it with a long wooden spoon to prevent sticking. They will pull out a noodle after an amount of time that can only be quantified as enough and throw it against the side of their car. If it sticks, it’s time to drain, then dump in the jars of homemade sauce, chunks of raw tomato, a jar of green olives. There is no meat because there is no refrigeration because there is no power for more than 500,000 people.
When you break for lunch, the grandmother who owns the home you are unburying will grab you by the arm and tell you it’s time to eat. You don’t tell her you aren’t hungry or that you do not eat in front of strangers because you do not tell a woman in mourning that she cannot take care of you. It is all she has right then.
Ignore what the men around you are saying. This is not the moment to teach a lesson. This is a moment of grace, where you sit on a tailgate next to a man you would never speak to in a bar, passing hot sauce back and forth over food containers. You tell them you are married, even though you don’t wear a ring, because it protects you. Not that you need protecting here — no one has the energy to cause harm.
Use your bread to wipe up every dollop of sauce. Eat every bite, even if you hate tomatoes. This is not food. This is a blessing. This is your mother, pulling her teeth out so you can use her mouth to chew. This is survival, and this is what West Virginia is best at.
Use your bread to wipe up every dollop of sauce. Eat every bite, even if you hate tomatoes. This is not food. This is a blessing. This is your mother, pulling her teeth out so you can use her mouth to chew. This is survival, and this is what West Virginia is best at.
June 26, 2016, 4 P.M.
You are not less than the men whose bodies were built for physical labor, even though your body tells you different. For seven hours, you bent yourself into the shape of your mother when she sowed carrot seeds down little mounds, knees bent, back bowed as you clawed through the muck, finding broken glass with your leatherbound fingers.
This is what you find in the dirt:
Clorox on floorboards. Nails from jars. A Christmas doll’s dress, her body long lost. Bag after bag after bag of newspapers, where you try to decipher which Kennedy was killed. Probably Bobby. He cared more about the people in West Virginia.
But your body is not lost. It is here and it is hurting and it is keening for rest. You are not weak; you are just not as strong as the men who are still hauling. When you limp out of the basement, whose doorway has been cleared of the mud, go to the front door, where the grandfather is still sitting, one hearing aid out and hanging from his shirt collar. Wave to the little boy at his feet and try not to hear the whimper in the old man’s voice as he yells for his wife. He can’t hear you, can’t face you, the woman who has crawled where he can’t stand to look. You carry his disappointment in your downturned face.
She pulls you close because she loves you, because she wants to leave with you, because she would give anything to have hopped in her car (like you did) and hit the road to help. But she is helpless.
When his wife comes to say goodbye, you apologize for not doing more, for being tired. For being a writer who hasn’t carried babies between or on her hips, for not carrying more for her. This is when she gives you the golden egg she saved for you.
You are tougher than shit. You are tougher than any man I’ve ever met. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
When she pulls you into her arms, do not pull back. Let the mud from your clothes attach to hers. Let the imitation-pearl buttons sully. Let your body leave a mark on her, like she has you. She pulls you close because she loves you, because she wants to leave with you, because she would give anything to have hopped in her car (like you did) and hit the road to help. But she is helpless.
Let the woman kiss your cheek and tell her you love her. That you’ll never forget her. Then go to the one who is waiting for you.
June 26, 2016, 6 P.M.
When you look for Topher, look for a Gay Mountain. That’s how you’ll remember forever the place where he lived. Gay Mountain in Ansted, West Virginia. It’s actually Gaymont Road, but it’s easier and funnier to pretend that it’s a mountain made of gay. You should know better, but you don’t, and he doesn’t mind anymore.
The road will scare you, either way you come off of 60, from east or west of town. You pull off the highway, its pin-curl curves like a warning that you don’t belong, onto a paved single-lane road. It is not enough for your giant car and another, so you take it slow and piss off the locals. This is not what scares you.
There will be a sign where you turn—a giant old whiteboard from a classroom. On it, you can write the name of the person you are visiting, wedding or funeral. There’s a chapel up the hill and a cemetery. You know where you’re going. This is not what scares you.
It is the tilt of the road into the ditch that scares you, and the creek that runs beside it, hard and fast. It’s the churning water against a culvert that makes you bite into your knuckle as you drive. It is the sign, coated in mud, that makes you wonder just how high the river ran here. High enough to wash him away?
This is why you came here. This is why you keep coming back here. As you turn the corner, his black headstone emerges from behind a chicken wire fence.
This is why you came here. This is why you keep coming back here. As you turn the corner, his black headstone emerges from behind a chicken wire fence. It is the only granite stone in the lot, newer than his grave. He was buried without a marker. You remember.
You park your car next to the entrance gate, held together with a blue bungee cord. Your boots sink into the grass, like they did in all the mud you’ve slogged today. That is not a good sign. But you look over the gate, touch the cord with your hand. You step softly into the graveyard.
The folks sleeping here are expecting you and the beers you have brought to share with Topher.
He is still there. The ground above him is soft, but untracked. The swallows sitting on his headstone sing in the fading light. It is late in the day and you are tired. You crack one open, upend it into the grass for Topher. Imagine his mouth is open and waiting. You open another for yourself and feel the metal press into your lip. It does not feel like him.
He is not here, but he is here. At least, what is left. As you lay down over him, your overalls absorb the moisture. Pretend it is his sweat. Take the wet into your mouth. Taste the grass. It is all that is left of him. But he didn’t wash away.
Dr. Delaney McLemore, or Doc, is a writer and gentlethem scholar in New Orleans. Their research interests include Appalachia, sex workers stories, and gender studies. They’re currently working on a true crime memoir and serving cocktails in nice restaurants.